"Forests precede civilizations, and deserts follow them."

-- François-René de Chateaubriand

Introduction:

An ecosystem's ability to produce and recover sustainably is called the “carrying capacity." Exceeding that capacity is called "overshoot."

For millions of years, the Earth’s interconnected and interdependent ecological systems have naturally adapted with the seasons and across millennia – from ice ages to warmer ages. But 65,000 years ago, humans began developing tools and cultures that dramatically expanded our populations, the range of our habitability, and our impact - often destructive -on ecological systems. At first, human impact was local; but now there are 8 billion of us busy transforming every corner of the Earth. We now co-opt every ecosystem through the intensified extraction of carbon, minerals, plants, animals, soil, and even the air and water.

Ecosystems have the natural capacity to provide abundance and to endure a normal range of stress. But human extraction and consumption has dangerously degraded both the productivity and capacity of ecological systems. Human consumption (especially by the privileged 20%) now exceeds the Earth’s carrying capacity by 250% - meaning, we need 2.5 Earth’s worth of resources and productivity to maintain the current level of carbon state extraction, consumption, and pollution.

But there's only one Earth. As a result, we are now consuming not just the products of ecosystems' carrying capacity, but the ecosystems themselves. The current level of planetary overshoot is a death-spiral, a form of planetary suicide destroying the life support systems necessary for human survival. The increasingly severe symptoms of overshoot are summarized below.

Planetary Overheating:

Science Facts: Since 1750, the beginning of the great acceleration of the carbon state, we’ve been burning carbon-based fuels at an exponential rate. For example, burning carbon-based fuels have nearly doubled atmospheric CO2 and Methane in less than 175 years. These greenhouse gases trap solar radiation, thereby heating the Earth. Our planet is now warmer than it has been in millions of years. 2024 registered about 1.60°C above the estimated 1850-1900 temperature designated to be the “pre-industrial level,” and each of the past 10 years (2015–2024) was one of the 10 warmest years on record.

The world’s preeminent climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen and his team predict that humans can no longer keep the Earth below +2.0°C above pre-industrial levels, we will "bake in" +2.4°C before 2050, and we’re likely to hit +4.0°C above pre-industrial levels before the end of the century.

Consequences: +2.4°C means that dangerously extreme weather will be the new normal; unprecedented fires, floods, hurricanes, and droughts. As we move toward +3.0°C, +3.5°C, and +4.0°C we can expect reduced food production, greater risk of famines, increased and sustained inflation across all economic sectors, societal disruption, instability, contraction, and an increased risk of conflicts, migration, pandemics, and wars.

Environmental Degradation:

Science Facts: Every second, humanity’s fossil-fuel-driven global heating dumps the equivalent of 5.5 Hiroshima nuclear bombs of heat into the atmosphere – more than 170 million nuclear bombs of heat every year. In 2024, the annual average sea surface temperature of the extra-polar ocean reached a record high of 20.87°C, 0.51°C above the 1991–2020 average.

Ninety percent of the heat goes into the ocean along with gigatons of CO2. The combination of rapid heating and dramatically rising ocean CO2 drives overheating and acidification. Vast oxygen-free ocean “dead zones” are developing. Meanwhile, we’re dumping billions of tons of toxins, poisons, and plastics into the ocean while destroying most tidal wetlands and estuaries. Over-fishing is so extreme it’s been accurately labeled “annihilation trawling” - literally stripping the oceans clean of life.

Meanwhile, throughout the surface of the Earth, habitat destruction, ecological extermination, and deforestation continue to accelerate.

Consequences: As we heat, pollute, diminish, degrade, and destroy the Earth’s natural ecological systems we shred the web of life that we depend on for our survival – not to mention the survival of millions of other species. Sooner or later ecological collapse will lead to civilizational collapse.

Biodiversity Loss

Science Facts: Globally, biodiversity is in steep decline; Earth’s wildlife populations have fallen on average by 73 percent in the past half-century. 90 percent of the large fish such as cod, sharks, halibut, grouper, tuna, swordfish, and marlin have been wiped out. The biomass of wild animals–in comparison to humans and human-supporting animals–is a fraction of its historical norm.

The more biologically diverse and complex an ecosystem, the more productive and stable the system. But humans have converted entire ecosystems into monoculture crops, extraction zones, sprawling cities, dumps and toxic sites. Only a few small islands of original ecosystems remain intact.

Consequences: The carbon state’s destructive, extractive, and consumptive civilization has so disrupted and destroyed the web of life that we have triggered the 6th Great Extinction. As we continue to eliminate planetary species, reduce biodiversity, and destroy ecosystems, we destroy the natural systems which sustain civilization.

Rising Economic Disparity

Facts: Economic disparity is accelerating at a record pace, both within the nations in the Global North, and between the nations of the Global North versus the Global North.  America's top billionaires, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Gates, have accumulated a collective net worth of more than $2 trillion, only $1.8 trillion off the total net worth of the nation's bottom 50 percent. Their support of the Trump administration indicates disparity will further increase and accelerate – potentially bankrupting the American and global economies.

Consequences: In the game of Monopoly, once a player owns 6 key properties and begins building houses, the game is over for other contestants – it’s just a matter of time.

The carbon state works the same way: the more money you have the less taxes you pay, which gives you more money to buy assets that make you even more money. It’s a vicious cycle where the rich get richer, take more and more for themselves and their corporations, leaving less and less for the rest of us. As the consequences of overshoot grow harsher, the negative economic impacts will threaten the well being of all humanity. Unstopped economic disparity will trigger social collapse.

Resource Depletion

We live on a finite planet with finite resources. Although we have 8 billion humans, the wealthiest top 20% consume more of the planet’s resources than the bottom 80%.

Food – as ecological systems degrade and collapse, so too will food predictability, productivity, and quality. Decreasing protein content in grains and decreasing overall yields are now the new normal. Increasing toxicity of soils and water, the loss of pollinators (Bees, etc.), and the reduced quality of foods will increasingly jeopardize human access to adequate nutrition.

Consequences: Between 150 and 200 million children are impaired by malnourishment. Increased food insecurity, famine-based migration, higher food prices, cessation of availability of certain kinds of foods, higher levels of food related diseases, and malnutrition will become more common as overheating and economic disparity intensify.

Water – Planet Earth is 70% water. All species, including humans, need water to live. No water, no life. Too much water, no life. Toxic water, no life. Oceans too hot, no life. Chemicals, toxins, and poisons now contaminate almost every source of “fresh” water on Earth. PFAS, or “forever chemicals” – dangerous to all life – are now found in every water source on the planet.

Consequences: Lack of access to safe drinking water, and the resultant spread of infectious diseases, kills at least 1.4 million people annually — 3,836 per day. Global heating, ecological destruction, abuse of aquifers, acidification, destructive forms of corporate agriculture, toxification, destructive forms of fishing, and waste have created a water emergency on a planet mostly covered with water. Our oceans, the source of human civilization, are dying.

Climate Wars

History – past and current – demonstrates that the conditions described above always lead to armed conflict; land wars, water wars, and wars to secure food, resources, security, and power.

Consequences: War accelerates every single negative condition discussed above. It makes all of the unwanted consequences happen faster and deeper.